Transcription
I got 30 million views on LinkedIn the past year and obviously it was not by luck. I follow a step-by-step process in order to create content that people love and engage with. This process allows me to write LinkedIn posts with over 100,000 views, like this one, this one, or even those ones. And in this video, I'm going to explain my content creation process so you can reuse it.
Okay, I will start with a hard truth. Most of the posts on LinkedIn are bad. The sight of the post is not so interesting, so you don't learn a lot. The main idea of the post is not so different; you've seen it 100 times. The hook is standard and doesn't trigger any interest. The structure and format of the post is hard to read, so you struggle to focus. And the text and the content is not good, so you stop reading after a few words. In the end, the post is a commodity; it's something that you can find anywhere else. So those are the main five reasons why some LinkedIn posts don't generate results: boring insight, the idea is not unique, there is a standard hook, the structure and the format are not clear, and the copy is not interesting.
So now I'm going to reverse engineer those five elements to give you the right creation process that I use every day to make posts that get over 100,000 views. So everything starts from the core insight. This is Step number one. You need to find an insight that is unique, fresh, and interesting. Because obviously, if your insight is not interesting, your post will not be interesting as well. And if you copy others' insights, you will not build a personal brand; you will just become a copycat. So instead, you should start from this: find the right insight. You can talk with your clients, prospects, or audience. Just analyze the questions that they ask, the problems that they have, or the dreams and objectives that they want to achieve.
Second, you can build in public. So analyze what you are doing in your day-to-day. Take notes of your experimentation, of the events, or everything that you are trying. And this will give you a list of insights that you can reuse in your posts. And last but not least, analyze your backstory because your story is unique. So you can analyze what you've done in the past. Check all the important and interesting points. And this will give you a list of insights to talk about.
So once you have this interesting insight, you need to give it an angle and to have a main idea. This is Step number two: is to find an idea. And here is a very important rule you need to remember: one post equals one idea. You should not try to talk about too many different ideas inside one post, or you will lose your audience's attention. So take your insight that you found in step one and give it a specific angle in order to have the idea of your post. You need to act like a journalist, you know, when they have an information from a source, then they will use this information to give an angle and publish it in the press. For example, if someone from your audience tells you that they have a problem, take this problem and explain a story about the problem. So this is the main idea of the post, and then you can move on to step three, which is about the structure and the format of your post.
And here is another truth: people don't read your post; they just skim through it. What they do is that they analyze the overall structure, they look at the most important sentences or at the bullet points, and then they get an idea about what you're talking about. If it's interesting, they might write a comment and like the post. And if it's really interesting for them, they will read the whole post again. And when they do that, the retention rate on your post increases, so they spend more time, and you get more impressions. But if the structure is hard to read, they will try to read it first, click on "view more," and then leave because it's hard to read. So make sure to use a good structure and format in order to deliver the insights. For example, you can have a look at carousels, infographics, or a framework called Problem Agitate Solution, or the storytelling framework, or the Before After Bridge framework. If you want to have more information about those five structures, you can have a look in the description. There is a free resource where I explain them in details. So make sure to go to the description, click on the link, download it. And at the same time, don't forget to like this video and click the subscribe button.
Then, when you have the structure of the post, you need to write a good hook. And this is Step number four. You need to write a great hook. So, so here is something very important: the hook will make or break your post. If I don't write a good hook, I cannot get a post with 100,000 views. So the hook is the two first lines of the post that the audience can read before clicking on "view more." Your hook has three roles. First, it needs to trigger the interest. People must feel like, "Oh, this is interesting, I want to know more." So this is what makes them click "view more." Second, it needs to tell to the reader what this post is about. So make it clear what you're going to talk about in the post. And third, they need to feel concerned. They need to understand that it's about them and that they can reuse the information for them. So make sure they understand it's about them.
To help you to understand what is a good hook, here are five examples that I've used in the past that generated great results on LinkedIn. The first hook is: "In 2022, I started posting short-form content. In 2023, I added long-form, and this happened." You see here, I trigger the interest with a before-after, so they want to know what happened next. The next one is: "Great marketing is rooted in silent groundwork." And then I give a list of points: deep market research, precise knowledge of the audience. Here, the frame is very obvious; they know it's about marketing, and they know that I'm talking about the silent work that is behind the scene. Then another example of hook is this list: "I don't live in San Francisco. I've not raised funds. I didn't get a big idea." This one is interesting because it starts with a list; it's not conventional, but it's interesting because it's very specific elements about my life. So this is why they want to click "view more." The next one is: "21 B2B marketing tactics for 2024." And people are interested mainly because I'm going to explain the marketing tactics, and they also see the infographics that make them more interested. And last but not least, this post generated over 5,000 engagements and over 800,000 impressions. It starts with: "Most founders lack clarity on marketing problems." And on the image, I share the four layers of marketing problems. Here, as you can see, I start from a problem in the hook that is very painful for the audience, so that's why they want to know how to fix this problem. And obviously, the infographic makes them want to click "view more" as well.
So here are four pieces of advice for your hook: you can use numbers to make your hook specific, you should talk directly to your audience so they feel concerned, you can state a problem and agitate that's the PAS framework, or you can share a surprising fact or idea in order to make them interested.
All right, when you have the hook, then you need to deliver the promise in Step number five, which is the content of your post, what we call the body. So here, what is very important is that you respect the structure that you've created and that you answer to the hook, so you deliver what you promised in the hook. Also, you need to make sure that your sentences are simple, easy to read, and that you don't use complex words because, as you remember, your audience doesn't read your post; they skim through it. So make sure to have a good formatting and to have simple sentences and words in order to explain the insights and deliver the promise of your hook. You can end the body of the text with a call to action. You can ask a question about what they think about your post, or you can ask a more specific question related to the insight you're talking about.
So those are the five steps, but here is a bonus step that I use a lot: is the image. So we live in a visual world, and people are bombarded with information. So you can add an image in order to attract and retain the attention of your audience. You can use visuals like an infographic, a graph, a chart, or a simple picture of you. You can also take a screenshot. Adding a title to the image will also serve as a hook to get the attention of your audience.
All right, those are the five steps plus one that I use in order to write posts that get over 100,000 impressions, and even sometimes way more, because some of my posts got more than 5 million impressions. So you can reuse this step-by-step framework. And don't forget, you can have a free resource in the description in order to find the five post structures and formats that you can reuse for your LinkedIn content.
All right, that's the end of this video. I hope it will help you to write good LinkedIn content. And if you have any questions, please feel free to ask them in the comments section.